Features to be consider while choosing an HRMS

When it comes to managing human capital in small and medium businesses like yours, HRMS offers incredible advantage.

Not only does it help you save time and money, it also minimizes the burden on your HR department and reduces the administrative costs. From successful recruitment, engaging on boarding to efficient payroll, training, off-boarding and more, the best HRMS provide a central location for employees to access their data, and for the HR to carefully store and monitor data. Small and medium sized businesses mostly carry out their payroll work and HR administrative work in-house, however as more staff is added or office expands, automating and integrating HR processes saves considerable time and money with error-free processing.

However, in 2017, tools that automate and integrate traditional HR process have become a hygiene factor whereas the real focus has shifted to HRMS platforms and apps with multiple modules that augment employee engagement, teamwork, innovation and collaboration for a performance-driven culture. However, choosing a good HRMS software is really difficult task for HR managers.

HOW TO CHOOSE BEST HRMS SYSTEM FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED BUSINESS?

In 2017, great HRMS solutions need to deliver more than just generic modules and generate reports based on integrated database of company’s personnel. They must facilitate a performance driven culture backed by always on-engagement and feedback tools. Although choosing a HRMS for your business depends on the size, business need and budget, here are the top 5 factors you must consider choosing the best HRMS system for small and medium sized businesses:

Is the HRMS System Cloud Based:

Muddled bureaucracy or a profit center that drives growth? Unlike the nearly extinct on-premise HR solutions, cloud-based HRMS is highly budget friendly and popular among SMEs and startups. The modular, cost-efficient HRMS solution is scalable and allows SMEs to improve overall efficiency of HR department, reduce costs and  deliver better  employee experience.

Cloud-based HRMS solutions help SMEs and startups substantially reduce in-house IT hardware and support spend. Total cost of ownership too is low due to subscription fees compared to proprietary software fees of on-premise systems. It serves as a single interface that is easily accessible across the entire workforce. Unlike on-premise HR solutions that weren’t user-friendly, required significant time and attracted heavy maintenance costs, cloud-based HRMS is easy to configure and adapt over time with instant access to updates and innovations.
  

Modular Comprehensive Solution and Easy Integration:

“One size doesn’t fit all” therefore you’d like to know whether the HRMS offers industry-focused modular and comprehensive solutions with easy integration capability through canned integration (partner apps) or open APIs. Does your HRMS vendor understand your industry and HR challenges? It is critical because their experience and expertise in your industry can save you the trouble of teaching them the nuances and achieve a more customized HRMS.

Ensure that your HRMS offers key features like ATS (Application Tracking System), Benefits Management, scheduling and shift planning, performance management, online learning or eLearning authority apart from standard modules. Of-course they must offer comprehensive industry specific features or niche functionality but it must also be flexible and adaptable to allow for easy third-party integration to enable you to redesign employee experience, which significantly saves time and money as also improve the value of HR.

Customizable HRMS Solution:

Customizable HRMS enables you to build customizable workflows to suit your business requirements. An ability to customize HRMS is a key factor and depends on your industry, specific need and requirement. It allows you to curate a distinct employee experience and align it well with your overall business strategy. Moreover, since a customizable HRMS is built specially for you, it be fully branded and offer a pleasant experience for HR and employees.

 Mobility:

In the BYOD and SMAC technologies (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) driven world, employees and HR would prefer on-the-fly access to HR data. Among the features that your mobile HRMS app must prioritize include ability to access and update personal data through ESS (Employee Self-Service) that will be used by the largest proportion of users, especially with the increasing popularity of BYOD policies. It should also feature another most common feature of time and attendance as also workplace scheduling and resource allocation for attendance management Among other things it is suggested that the apps must be available across iOS and Android, feature easy to use and appealing UI, be available offline and feature real-time push notifications for updates, HR information for on-field employees.

Scalable:

As a small and medium business, you need an HRMS that grows with you. At the outset, you must ensure that the cost of scaling does not outweigh the benefits and that the solution provider will easily facilitate the organizational growth while attending to any requirements during the transition. Because growth is not always predictable or linear, it is always advisable to choose an HRMS platform that can be easily scaled up or scaled down based on your requirements.

Secure:

With growing instances of ransomware attacks and cyber-crimes, it is important that your HRMS must have security measures in place to protect from malicious attacks. HRMS packs in a goldmine of data which includes your employees’ data including personal and financial data, it is thus critical to protect the data with access controls. The addition of unknown IP address further makes HRMS susceptible to outside hackers, Information breaches and identity theft from both outside and within the organization.

Blog was originally published here